


Augury

by kangeiko



Category: Rome
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-11
Updated: 2006-08-11
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:06:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young Lucius goes to war for he knows not what.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Augury

  
The generals cast stones across their tables, one by one, and watch where they fall. This is how they decide where to move their armies and spill the blood of men, Lucius Vorenus is sure. He is a mere soldier and has never seen a general up close, it is true, and Venus would be on her hands and knees for him before he does, he is certain - but, yes, he sees it clear as daylight: Caesar, and Pompey, and the rest, casting stones and entrails and waging a war against he knows not what.

His brothers of the 13th call him a Catonian. He laughs at the suggestion - what does he know of politics or of philosophy? He knows only the sword, and the spray of blood, and the screaming of women as he kills their men and cattle. He knows only how to bring death and sow it into the land, and the next season the soil will be fertile and yield fruits and wheat and grasses to feed all their livestock a thousand times over. No: where Cato speaks his high rhetoric, Vorenus will never step foot. He is a soldier, and his bloodied cape cannot bring him home thus. All he can hope is that it helps him miss the fall of stones across the parchment nailed to Caesar's table; that it brings him home at all.

Cato said, "I wonder how one haruspex can keep from laughing when he sees another," and the day Vorenus sees his first general or petty king - what does it matter? - dethroned and defrocked, bowing low to Caesar's might, he wonders the same thing.

One by one, the stones fall, and men fall with them, spilling entrails 'cross the floor. Vorenus knows nought of what they spell, only that it cannot augur well, for they always spell it in blood.

*

fin

**Author's Note:**

> The Cato quote is an actual Cato quote. So there.


End file.
